Emotional freedom techniques (EFT), or tapping, are an alternative therapy that involves stimulating certain points on the body to relieve anxiety, stress, and other symptoms. While some research suggests EFT may be helpful for conditions like anxiety and PTSD, it’s ineffective and potentially harmful for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), you know how overwhelming the condition can be. Obsessions and compulsions can take up significant time, leaving you searching for relief. While treatments like exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy are very effective for managing OCD, you may be curious about additional techniques that exist for managing distress.
One method that has gained popularity is emotional freedom techniques (EFT). Many claim it can help with a variety of mental health conditions, including OCD—but does it really work? In this article, we’ll explore what emotional freedom techniques are, whether they’re an effective or a potentially harmful treatment for OCD, and how you can best address your OCD symptoms.
In This Article
What are emotional freedom techniques (EFT)?
Emotional freedom techniques (EFTs), also known as tapping or psychological acupressure, are a form of alternative medicine and mindfulness practice that some use to manage stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This method’s core belief is that tapping points (known as meridian points) on your body and face with your fingertips can relieve psychological and physical problems by restoring a balance of energy.
Stanford engineer Gary Craig introduced EFTs in the 1990s, basing his holistic method on the other alternative therapies derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), such as acupuncture, applied kinesiology, and thought field therapy. In the decades since, extensive research has supported EFTs as an effective method for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. One study found that people with anxiety who used tapping experienced complete symptom relief, compared to 51% of patients who did cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Another demonstrated that EFT techniques significantly reduced symptoms of depression.
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How do emotional freedom techniques (EFT) work?
Like acupuncture, EFT tapping focuses on meridian points to restore the body’s energy balance. TCM states that 12 primary meridians or channels carry energy through the body. Acupoints—or meridian points—sit along these meridians and can be stimulated through acupuncture or acupressure.
When these channels are interrupted, followers of TCM and similar alternative therapies believe that physical and emotional symptoms can emerge. When these channels are stimulated, EFT enthusiasts say you can encourage better energy flow through blocked or drained areas of your body. They argue that restoring a healthy energy balance puts your body in the best position to handle mental, physical, and emotional stressors.
While acupuncture uses needles to apply pressure to these meridian points, EFT uses fingertip tapping to restore energy balance. This basically looks like using your fingertips to rhythmically tap on specific points on your body—like your forehead, under your eyes, and collarbone—while focusing on whatever is bothering you.
What are the steps of EFT tapping?
EFT tapping focuses on nine acupoints in a specific sequence. However, tapping is only part of this holistic approach, which centers on identifying and addressing specific emotional, psychological, or physical concerns.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to EFT tapping:
- Identify the issue: The first step doesn’t involve tapping but identifying the problem that’s currently bothering you—whether that’s stress, anger, depression, or pain.
- Rate the intensity of the issue: Once you’ve identified the problem, rate its intensity on a scale of zero to 10, with zero meaning you feel completely okay and 10 meaning the issue is debilitating.
- Choose your setup statement: Create a statement that acknowledges both the problem you’re facing and your own self-acceptance. For example, you could say, “Even though I feel stressed and tense, I allow myself to relax and let go.”
- Start the tapping sequence: At this point, you’ll start the tapping sequence. This sequence involves slowly and systematically tapping on the endpoints of the nine specific meridian points in order (top of head, eyebrow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, under arm, side of hand) using two or more fingertips. You’ll tap each spot at least five times each. As you tap these points, you’ll want to maintain your focus on the problem by repeating variations of your setup statement.
- Rate the final intensity: After completing the tapping sequence, rate the intensity of the problem again on a scale from zero to 10. Doing this allows you to assess for any changes.
- Repeat as necessary: If there were little to no changes to your rating, you can restart the process as many times as needed.
Are emotional freedom techniques (EFT) effective for OCD?
While EFT tapping may be beneficial for conditions that commonly co-occur with OCD—such as anxiety and depression—there’s limited research to support its use as a standalone or complementary treatment for the condition. Tracie Ibrahim, LMFT, CST, NOCD’s Chief Compliance Officer, advises against using EFT for OCD. She says when it comes to managing OCD, it’s crucial to understand how the cycle of symptoms works, and how to disrupt it. Specifically, you need to be aware of how OCD hijacks your brain’s “alarm system,” creating an intense sense of threat or danger by triggering obsessions that feel urgent and distressing. In response, you perform compulsions to try to find relief—but these behaviors only reinforce your fears, making symptoms worse over time.
Effective treatment, like ERP therapy, helps you understand and break this cycle by teaching you to sit with uncertainty and resist compulsions. EFT, on the other hand, doesn’t address the underlying mechanisms of OCD. Instead, it functions as yet another response to anxiety—one that, if used repeatedly to manage distress, could easily turn into a compulsion itself—which we’ll discuss next.
“OCD is not about your meridian points being tapped—it has to do with a malfunction in your brain,” she explains. “The way that we deal with that is by educating you on what OCD is, understanding that it is indeed a malfunction happening in your brain, and then addressing that.”
As mentioned, it’s possible for tapping to become a compulsive behavior over time. When an intrusive thought pops up, you may start tapping as a way to try to minimize the distress from the thought or figure out why the obsession emerged. Since EFT tapping can be done any time you’re feeling scared or anxious, you could find yourself responding to any negative emotions with these repetitive tapping behaviors—which is exactly what OCD wants you to do.
Ibrahim says facing your fears and learning that they aren’t real threats is the preferred way to treat OCD—but mindfulness can help, too.
Using mindfulness practices and ERP therapy for OCD
The best treatment for OCD is a specialized form of CBT known as ERP therapy. Unlike other forms of CBT, ERP is specially designed to treat OCD. ERP is proven to be highly effective, with 80% of people seeing a significant reduction in their OCD symptoms.
With the help of an ERP therapist, you’ll work through exposures and response prevention techniques that teach you how to address your fears head-on without responding with compulsions. While doing ERP can be challenging, if you stay consistent and do your homework outside of sessions, you can see a change in your symptoms over time.
Although using EFT for OCD is ineffective and potentially harmful, Ibrahim says that there are other ways you can incorporate mindfulness into your treatment plan. That being said, it’s important to use mindfulness as a complement to ERP and to be intentional about which aspects you use. “It’s okay to do things that bring you into the present moment, but we don’t do mindful breathing, as it trains your brain that when you have an emergency, you need to calm down,” she says. “This is not what we want to train our brain to do.”
Mindfulness can be especially helpful for mental compulsions like rumination, says Ibrahim. This is because when you’re ruminating, you tend to be in the past or the future, and mindfulness can bring you back to the present. Ibrahim recommends the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique for OCD. This five-step exercise can help when you’re feeling anxious or scared by bringing you back to the present moment. To ground yourself, you’ll name things you can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste around you. Ibrahim also recommends outdoor mindfulness activities, such as gardening, taking a walk, or watching the clouds to relieve distress from OCD.
Bottom line
OCD can be overwhelming and distressing. In your search for symptom relief, it’s important to be sure that any therapies you come across are effective treatments for the condition. While EFT has been proven to help some other mental health conditions, these techniques are not recommended for OCD—as they can become compulsive, and there is very limited research to support their efficacy for the condition.
If you want a treatment that will make a lasting impact on your symptoms, consider ERP therapy. By working with a trained therapist, you’ll learn how to respond differently to feelings of distress—eventually reducing the overall discomfort you feel.
Key takeaways
- Emotional freedom techniques (EFT), or tapping, is an alternative therapy that involves tapping specific points on the body to relieve distress.
- While EFT may be helpful for anxiety, depression, or PTSD, using EFT for OCD isn’t beneficial as it doesn’t address the root causes of the condition, and the techniques could become compulsive.
- Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is the most effective, evidence-based treatment for OCD, and can be used alongside some mindfulness techniques.
